This will conclude my series on how to read and understand the Bible before beginning my next series on the 10 major systematic theology categories. Last week, I wrote about how Jesus is the ultimate central message of the Bible. Every passage of Scripture is meant to point to Jesus and reveal Him and also show what He is not. But I also left last week pointing out that if we truly are to follow Jesus, we must take all that comes with Him. That is what this post is about. While every passage is about Jesus, it is also about living a life with Jesus at the center.
The American Church as a whole has overemphasized “just believe Jesus” so you can get to heaven and the rest is details. The problem is that Jesus never taught that Himself, and neither did Paul or any other Biblical author. Luke 14:25-35 is one of the most neglected teachings of Jesus today, telling us to “count the cost.” Few people are being taught today that to be a Christian is not a freebie. While it is a “free gift” in that we do not do anything to earn it, there most certainly is a cost to it, and that cost is steep. It cost Jesus His life; it also costs us ours. We are to die daily to self, take up our own cross, and follow Jesus. Jesus did not say, “Proclaim my name, say good things about me, but you can live your life as you want otherwise.” Yet that is how many “Christians” live today. Many will adamantly deny they do this, but it won’t take lot of pressing for them to show that is exactly what they believe. So, what are other major themes throughout the Bible that revolve around following Christ?
First, you are not God. God is God. God is not like you nor molds to your desires. I will take any person to task who challenges me in my claim here that the bulk of “modern Christianity” in America today does not worship God but worships self. Listen to them. Listen to how they preach and pray. It’s all about how God can help them and service them. They treat God as their “Divine Butler.” They see Jesus as the “Humble Servant” and instead make him “THEIR servant.” God is Holy. Not just holy but holy, holy, holy. He is not like us. He is separate from everything in this universe not just in substance but especially in thinking. And in man’s hubris, we have created an image of God that does what we want, is against what we are against, likes what we like, hates what we hate, and is frankly a mirror image of us or what we would be like if we were God. One of the central messages of the Bible is that God is not like us. He is above us, far above and beyond us, where sinful man cannot grasp Him. Yet He has let us know Him in ways our finite minds can comprehend.
With that is a call for separation. This is nearly completely absent from modern Christianity today. We are to be in this world but not of it. And it’s not the Word of Faith only that does this. Listen to the Old Earth Creation scholars. They are totally engulfed in this world. They cannot understand how you can proclaim the name of Jesus and actually agree with what Jesus said about origins. Some of these scholars of various types go as far as saying that we cannot understand the Scriptures without understand the Ancient Near East cultures that surrounded them. That is absurd. Israel was told repeatedly to not be like the other nations. Yes, they were a nation that was in the Ancient Near East, but their culture was extremely different and God disciplined them every time they tried to mix with the other cultures. We in the United States are no different. We are called to be different from the culture and yet the primary philosophy of many churches today is to be like the world. We are not to think like the world, act like the world, embrace the world or any of its ideas, from millions of years (which is out of secular humanistic naturalistic thinking), to the sexual perversions we are seeing today, to the lust for material wealth, health, and prosperity, to the consumer mentality, to critical race theory and other Marxist ideologies, or even to the political issues. We are not to think like the culture, no matter what culture it is.
We were saved not only for enjoying paradise either. We were saved for the purpose of serving and glorifying God. This is often missed in the studying of Exodus. My pastor has pointed that out as he has been going through his teaching series on Exodus the last almost 2 years (and we aren’t halfway through yet). God did not save Israel because He was sad about their fate as slaves. He saved them so that they would be His people, serve Him, represent Him, and be a people that would raise up the Savior and proclaim the Savior to the world. That is our job, too. We are not saved just to get out of Hell. We are saved so that we can be separate from the world and to serve, worship, and glorify God. Our primary dream about going to heaven should not be for paradise, but our primary dream should be about being with Christ. Our dream should be about being finally free from all that which goes against Christ (which is sin). We were created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever; the paradise is just the cherry on top. But if Christ is our focus, then Christ should BE our focus.
Finally, a key message throughout Scripture is summarized in Proverbs 3:5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. A central message to the Bible and a central message to Christianity and following Christ is to not rely on self, especially self’s understanding of things. I do not think it is unfair to state that you are not following Christ if you are relying on your own understanding of things; you are following you in that moment, not Christ. So when you hear, “That’s your interpretation” or “That’s not how I see it” or any other variation of that, you are listening to self’s opinions, not what God has said. And while we can only proclaim what we know, we must take the pulpit or the pen very seriously. I can tell when what I write and what I speak is coming from God and when it is coming from self. And the latter is nearly always convoluted and confusing and often gibberish. But God speaks clearly and poignantly so that we have no excuse on what He meant. We are to trust God, not ourselves. When we read and study the Bible and we are saved, the Holy Spirit is with us. He is a far better teacher than any preacher or scholar (and that is no knock on those who have done these great studies). If you submit to the Holy Spirit and read the Bible for yourself with the mindset of believing and obeying it, you will find that the Holy Spirit is an even better teacher of Scripture than I ever could be.
Next week is 2023, and I will open up the year with a 10-post series on Systematic Theology. Enjoy.
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